...How do we rein in our intelligence agencies -- make it impossible for the government to exploit them for domestic purposes -- while still allowing them to do their work? Can this even be done? Don't we have to give the agencies at least some room to operate? This is where I usually parted ways with Rand Paul and, for that matter, Julian Assange. Now I am not so certain.

Of one thing, however, I am sure. The entire use of intelligence agencies by the government needs a thorough airing, as do the agencies themselves. This will be extremely difficult. Threatened, the agencies, like any bureaucracy, but even more by their nature, will clam up. Getting at the truth will take a thousand crowbars and twice as much patience.

Further, normally strong advocates of civil liberties (at least they said they were), the Democratic side will do anything in their power to avoid the subject, lest the reputation of Barack Obama be shattered, which is of course a possibility. In the current hyper-partisan climate, they will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent that. This very night I saw a MSNBC video clip of an editor of Mother Jones, a man I have known for some time, saying -- with a straight face -- that the reason Susan Rice's veracity was being questioned by conservatives was because she is black. With people thinking like that, this country is a deep trouble. Or more precisely, it's gone off the deep end.